Wine and beer making on a non-commercial scale has gained in popularity among North American hobbyists in recent years, wherein the usual practice is to use pre-packaged ingredients to create alcoholic beverages. Various devices can be employed to achieve this end, one of the most commonly encountered components being a glass carboy. These carboys are glass containers of large volume with a small neck opening, ideal for the fermentation process involved in wine- and beer-making.
However, the small neck opening and large volume make it difficult to effectively clean the carboy interior, the result often being a sediment residue in the carboy bottom or adjacent the neck opening. This sediment can negatively affect the quality of future wine or beer products made in the carboy. Also, the size and shape of the carboy facilitates the accumulation of condensation on the interior after cleaning, and the awkward shape makes it a challenge to fully drain and dry the carboy, with the result again being a negative impact on future product quality. Finally, hobbyists are finding out what many who work With carboys have known for some time—carboys are heavy, awkward, and difficult to manipulate during attempts to use or clean them. Manipulating a heavy, wet carboy by hand during the cleaning process may result not only in sore muscles but possible carboy breakage or injury to the hobbyist due to dropping the carboy.
There have been various prior attempts to address the problems associated with carboys, such as the carboy holder disclosed in U.S. Pat. No. 1,357,646 to Miller, or the carboy loader, mover, and tilter taught in U.S. Pat. No. 1,727,523 to Schwenk. None of these, however, address the problems encountered by wine- and beer-making hobbyists during the cleaning and drying process. Numerous attempts have been made to address the problem of container cleaning and drying in the context of bottles, such as U.S. Pat. No. 4,104,081 to Totten, U.S. Pat. No. 4,738,582 to Roberts, and U.S. Pat. No. 5,507,060 to Quimpo, and the “Bottle Buddy” of Canadian Patent Application 2,216,074, but none of these provide a solution to the difficulties unique to carboys and other oversize containers.